CHURCH AND STATE. 801 



insisting on self-claims while respecting the claims of others, 

 which the system of contract involves. The attitude of 

 mind fostered by this discipline does not favour unqualified 

 submission, either to the political head and his laws or to the 

 ecclesiastical head and his dogmas. While it tends ever to 

 limit the coercive action of the civil ruler, it tends ever to 

 challenge the authority of the priest; and the questioning 

 habit having once commenced, sacerdotal inspiration comes to 

 be doubted, and the power flowing from belief in it begins to 

 wane. 



With this moral change has to be joined an intellectual 

 change, also indirectly resulting from development of in 

 dustrial life. That spreading knowledge of natural causation 

 which conflicts with, and gradually weakens, belief in super 

 natural causation, is consequent on development of the indus 

 trial arts. This gives men wider experiences of uniformities of 

 relation among phenomena ; and makes possible the progress 

 of science. Doubtless in early stages, that knowledge of 

 Nature which is at variance with the teachings of priests, is 

 accumulated exclusively by priests ; but, as we see in the 

 Chaldean astronomy, the natural order is not at first con 

 sidered inconsistent with supernatural agency; and then, 

 knowledge of the natural order, so long as it is exclusively 

 possessed by priests, cannot be used to disprove their pre 

 tensions. Only as fast as knowledge of the natural order 

 becomes so familiar and so generally diffused as insensibly to 

 change men s habits of thought, is sacerdotal authority and 

 power diminished by it ; and general diffusion of such know 

 ledge is, as we pee, a concomitant of industrialism. 



